St Fredianus Diverts the River Serchio

Frediano was a 6th-century bishop of Lucca, and this is the story his city told about him for centuries. The river Serchio kept flooding the town, so the bishop took a simple rake, walked down to the water, and scratched a new channel into the ground. The river followed the line he had drawn and turned away from Lucca. Lippi sets the miracle in a wide, calm stretch of country, the kind of open landscape he liked to run behind his figures, with the diverted water threading off into the distance. It is a small panel, made to sit low on an altar, close enough that a worshipper could lean in and follow the water along its new path.